TwentyFive to Life
by Zaedah
Summary: Presenting two hours of my life that I'll never get back... Prompt-o-rama!


_Zaedah's trivial contribution to the most oddly frustrating challenge I've ever tried to complete. If not for a personal 2 hour time limit, I'd be revising this monster til Armageddon. _

_Thanks to Hidden Relevance, challenge creator and killer of my confidence!_

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**1-Magma**

Their fiery words spewed forth in a haze of volcanic ash and Powell deemed them personally responsible for global warming.

**2-Simulation**

When his turn came to lead, the youngest of a now-defunct team drummed up his best replication of steel, intimidating no one.

**3-Elucidate**

Press surrounded her hours after the explosion and though Eva lived for this, the sole survivor had left all of her words under the rubble.

**4-Optical**

She wondered which shade of blue the fetus would pick; the competitor in her desirous to see her own eyes in her offspring and yet for once, she hopes she'll lose.

**5-Thaw**

The affair started with snowfall and ended with the melt; as brief as undisturbed inches on a curbside and twice as trampled.

**6-Maternal**

It had been a step forward to something bigger that she hadn't planned and now she wasn't sure how to step back from the little boy in someone else's arms.

**7-Paws**

It wasn't helpful, really, the nonsense words typed with inconvenient steps across the laptop when she tried working from home.

**8-Mystery**

Despite the volume of his demand to find it, a fitting diagnosis did not lie in any medical journal and she has the paper cuts to prove it.

**9-Benefit**

He'd been divorced a while and was therefore ready to concede to outdated thinking, but when did generic comforting for tough cases begin leading to nakedness?

**10-Anti**

They all suspected Colima would have far-reaching repercussions, but no one was prepared for watching the enthusiasm with which Miles consumed the still-bleeding steak.

**11-Samaritan**

It was his belief that sacrificing time with his dad was a choice for the greater good by which strangers were saved; though his batting average suffered for it.

**12-Boarder**

From his hotel door he looked at them with the patient eyes of one wiser than his species; but would it kill them to bring back a souvenir bone?

**13-Morning**

Watching women decide on daily outfits was never his spectator sport of choice; still, the more he aided Kim's indecisiveness, the looser that towel became.

**14-Wake**

It is the same blast he hears every night, blasphemous tones of flying shrapnel and falling bodies; that he can shake and gasp unnoticed is the bliss of an empty bed.

**15-Brag**

With her first NIH paycheck came the new car, the shine and smell something she wanted to drop into every press statement for weeks.

**16-Scold**

The tear's descent is inappropriate and she tells it so; the tiny body must be cut regardless of the clarity of her vision.

**17-B&ch**

What they didn't know is that she could read lips, a gift from a deaf grandmother; a daily recount of whispered name-calling was tossed back merrily with her wine.

**18-Caveat**

It's not until the ringing cell flies out of the car window and into the water that she begins to take his threat seriously.

**19-Failure**

It's a bleak headstone of name and dates, exemplifying the hopelessness of his last days that no fervent promises could alter; always a trial patient, never a success.

**20-Manacles**

The plastic fuzziness barely secures her to the bed and the struggle is as halfhearted as the capture; she knows he'll let her go just as he knows she won't leave.

**21-Favor**

They don't appreciate him, he muses to the bartender, staring at a drink he can't swallow and knowing full well that gaining approval would be as fleeting as any buzz.

**22-Expectations**

Standing as best man at Stephen's wedding, it hardly shocked Frank that Natalie was radiance; it was only surprising that she wasn't the bride.

**23-Interment**

It should have had a proper burial, the suddenly sentimental Connor muses as the corpse is driven away in pieces, receiving little dignity in its farewell; but sometimes a plane is just a plane.

**24-Reunion**

Eva started the barbecues as a way to keep the aging group together despite their divergent paths; at first a nightmare of scheduling, the first one set an enjoyable tone which allowed each subsequent party to arrange itself with miraculous ease.

**25-Inducement**

It is not with confidence that Natalie pushes her feminine wiles upon an uncooperative suit; rather it is for his own salvation because if Connor had to convince him, the weakling would have found bruises instead of boobs.


End file.
